GRADESHEET.COM rents computers, disk space and Internet connections from a Adgrafix, located in Sudbury, MA. Your files are stored there, together with thousands of megabytes of other data.
Wait five minutes, calm down and DO NOT DO any more file transfers. Do not open the gradesheet for data entry, and if you have already opened it do NOT press DONE, or SAVE. Use the "Back" button of your browser, to go to the Teacher's page. Find the line starting by "Grades with full names for the...", and view (click) each one of the entries. If meaningful information is still there, make a printout right away (Use the "File" "Print" feature of Netscape, or similar ones in any other browser).Search your own computer. Do you have a recent copy of the spreadsheet that can be still used? If you are using GradeBook, go to "Look at the user log" on the Teacher's page, and review the names of the recent users. It is possible that you find a two weeks old copy of the spreadsheet, but only a few people made entries lately, and you can ask them to redo the work. (After all, they should have their own backup printouts, don't they?)
If the damage is great and there is no other way to fix it, you may try to send an E-mail to "webmaster@gradesheet.com" describing your problem. Please give us your telephone number. If we get your E-mail in time, we may be able to restore your files from the backup copy. Keep in mind that backups are made every night, and earlier backups are not saved. By no means can we can guarantee that we can fix the problem, but we will try...
Yes. In contrast to a regular "Excel" spreadsheet, GradeBook and StudentInfo can handle entries consisting of a mix of numbers and letters. There is a simple rule to follow: only the leading numbers are treated as numbers. For example "2.0 add" is treated as 2.00; whereas "add 2.00" is treated as a comment. There is no limit to how much text can be added, except too much text will make the printout of the class grade sheet quite awkward-looking.One can use this feature very conveniently for keeping track of re-grades, dropouts, etc. For example, if a student stops participating in the course work, write an "x" in front of her/his grades. This way the record of the student remains there, but will not influence the calculation of the course average. If someone missed a midterm, you may want to enter "0 miss" as a grade, indicating that the "0" was the result of not being there. A student complaining about his midterm grade of 25 and getting 2 more points can have "27 regr 25" in his record (comes handy later, when she/he is complaining again).
You need a spreadsheet with the names of the students, ID numbers and at least one column called "Total". The spreadsheet file has to be saved on your computer as a "comma separated values" (or .csv) file. Windows, Apple or UNIX systems work equally well. See the help page for more about setting up your spreadsheet.
It takes about 2 minutes to set-up a new StudentInfo account, and upload the spreadsheet file - a bit more if you have not done these kind of things before, a bit less if you already have an account on GRADESHEET.COM. The students may start to log in and check their grades from the moment the spreadsheet is uploaded.
No. Only the teacher (you) can change the grades, by uploading another file. To be protected against hackers, follow a few simple rules: guard your password, do not use open access computers, and keep a printed copy of the spreadsheet.
No. The student has to know the ID number in order to see the grades. If someone tries to "guess" ID numbers, then it may be possible to "get lucky" and see someone else's grades. But the name of the student is NOT shown, so the information is quite useless.
When "Browse" selected, some computers show only one file type, like "HTML files" only. Simply put *.* or *.csv in the window, and your file may appear.
A simple GradeBook looks very much like a spreadsheet, with the students' names in rows, and the various grades in columns. In fact, the course administrator can download the file to her/his own computer and edit it in any spreadsheet program, like Excel. On the other hand, the teachers and graders of the course can enter grades to the columns assigned to them, and students can read the row that has their grades. All of this is done over the Internet, with password protection against unauthorized access.Larger courses may require more than a simple spreadsheet. GradeBook can be set up so that the students are divided into "Sections". It is also possible to create separate spreadsheets for each "Grading Unit", and have a main spreadsheet where all of the grades are collected automatically.
In a larger course, students are often divided into smaller groups, and assigned to separate instructors. For example, a laboratory may be able to handle only 25 students at a time, but there are 200 students in the class. It is natural to set up 9 or 10 groups. We call these groups "Sections".
No. But, for classes larger than 100 students, sections help to reduce data traffic, and speed up operations.
In a typical college course there are several contributions to the final grade. In the main spreadsheet of GradeBook each one of the contributions have a column belonging to it. We call these contributions "grading units". The student's final grade is based on the weighted average of the points received in the grading units.Some grading units, like a final exam, consists of one grade, given at one time. These grades can be best entered directly to the main spreadsheet.
Other grading units have several grades, collected over a period of time. For example, students may get graded repeatedly for lab work, homework, participation in discussion, perhaps for attendance, etc. Entering all of these grades to the main spreadsheet is cumbersome, although it is possible. But the course director can create separate spreadsheets for each one of these grading units, so that the main spreadsheet does not get cluttered with too many numbers. If a separate spreadsheet is set up for a grading unit, GradeBook takes a simple average of the scores for each student, and transfers the result to the main spreadsheet automatically.
Instructors can be authorized to enter grades for grading units and sections. In other words, if Professor Peter Smith is a laboratory instructor for Section 2, he can see all of the grades of his Section 2 students, but he can change only the Lab grades.
Yes. It is perfectly possible to have Student John Doe in Section 1 for homework and Section 3 for the lab. Furthermore, it is not necessary for a student's name to appear in all grading units.
When the instructor saves the new entries (hits DONE) the new entries are saved, and the total score is calculated for each student within the Section. Then the total is recorded in the main spreadsheet. The transfer is based solely on each student's ID number.
Yes, every instructor can see all the grades of all students belonging to her/his Section(s).
No. Entering grades is based on the various authorizations done the course director or administrator.Typically, the "course director" has access to everything, including the ability to download and upload the spreadsheets. A "teacher" can be also authorized to access practically anything (except download/upload). An instructor responsible to a particular grading unit can change the grades belonging to that unit only. For example, a lab instructor can not enter or change homework grades.
One of them will be asked to wait. The "look and feel" will be similar to having a single large sheet of paper, passed from one instructor to the other.
The spreadsheet is assigned to an instructor for a limited time, typically 20 minutes. The clock restarts when activity is detected. However, if the instructor does not send data for a long time, the next user will be allowed to take over.
We use a truncated version of the student ID number. The student's name appears only on password protected pages.
No. They need to know their student ID number, and use the last 6 digits to log in. No harm is done if someone guesses random ID numbers, since the student's real name does not appear on the output.
At present, the best way is to create a separate grading unit. First, add a column called "comp" to the main spreadsheet. Have a spreadsheet called "comp.csv" with of (at least) three columns: "ID number", "score" and "total". Fill in the "ID number" and the "score", and upload the file. Check if the upload is OK, press DONE, and open the main spreadsheet. The grades should appear in the "comp" column.
You do not have to. GradeBook will do the merge "on the fly" each time an output is generated. After a "Last, First" combination is generated, the last few characters of very long names may be truncated. These tricks will save quite a lot of space on your screen, and yet keep as much of the student's name as possible.
Sorry, you can not do that. When you save the file in "csv" format, those relationships are lost. You have to live with the (limited, but useful) capabilities of calculating weighted averages that are programmed into GradeBook.
Any column or row that is labeled "average" or "total" is re-calculated by GradeBook. In a sense, the numbers in these columns (rows) are not "yours".To prevent this from happening, add a new column, like "my_average", or "Summary" to the right hand side of "Total" (or "Average"). The numbers belonging to this label will not be changed by GradeBook, and will not be taken into account for the calculation of the Total column. However, when the grade is reported to the students, GradeBook will still use the "Total" column for reporting the class distribution curve.
If you really need to report the results of your own calculations to the students, here is how can you fool GradeBook into accepting your numbers and placing them into the Total. Create a new gradesheet, (call it "final.csv") with two columns, in addition to the standard columns used to identify the students. The first column should be the result of your calculation, and the second one should be called "Total". Other columns, for example a letter grade, may be also added. Alternatively, create a separate account on StudentInfo, and upload the file there (StudentInfo does not do any change on the grade sheet).